


taste of dried up hopes in your mouth

by Morcai



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Angst, Gen, POV Second Person, Regret, ethics are the limit of the loser, losing your morals one world-saving decision at a time, the author is deeply defensive of tyl!tsuna, tsuna feels bad but not bad enough to not do this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 08:42:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7750909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morcai/pseuds/Morcai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sawada Tsunayoshi knew what he was doing, with the bullet, the bazooka, and the child he sent to war. That doesn't mean he liked his decisions.</p><blockquote>
  <p> </p>
  <p>    <i>He says he can find someone who Byakuran cannot predict, to take your place and rip down this cancer at its source. You can’t tell him that you’re afraid he’s going to find exactly what he’s looking for, and you’re going to let him.</i><br/>  </p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	taste of dried up hopes in your mouth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MythLore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MythLore/gifts).



The white spell scientist says that he can find someone, somewhere in the tetrillions of worlds that your opponent sees daily, who never drove Flame into the Vongola rings to stop an ever escalating arms race. He says he can bring that person here, replace you with them, put this war you’re fighting on almost-equal terms.

He says he can find someone who Byakuran cannot predict, to take your place and rip down this cancer at its source. You can’t tell him that you’re afraid he’s going to find exactly what he’s looking for, and you’re going to let him.

You have been fighting this war for almost three years now, and you’re scarred and skeletal from it, your Flame curls, too-active, under your breastbone. You’re a soldier, a general, a swordsman trained to the peak of skill--

It’s just not enough.

Byakuran is simply  _ better _ , faster, more powerful, more influential, more advanced. You’re barely nipping at his heels, even as you whirl precise flame into white-hot arrows aimed at his heart.

Shouichi tells you he can find the perfect person, the one version of you who could take Byakuran down, here and now. It terrifies you, and you try not to admit why.

(the best swordsman does not fear the second best swordsman.)

Instead, you blow off steam sparring with your Guardians, letting fine-pointed lances of flame bloom around you and flicker towards their targets with a sharpshooter’s accuracy, one thing that you can pride yourself in.

(he fears the worst.)

You spend hours with Kyouya, writing out the necessities of this last-ditch plan, trying to keep it uncomplicated enough that  _ somewhere _ there has to be a version of yourself that suits.

When you send your list to Shouichi, he looks at you with almost-understanding, and says he’ll try for older, wiser, more understanding, for someone who will not hate you for what you’re doing to them. Someone with the training to handle this without destroying themself.

He’s going to fail. You know this. It’s not Intuition, or prescience, or anything even mildly like that. It’s simple logic. You’re amazed he can’t see what you can.

The worst swordsman is not an old swordsman. An old swordsman is either good or dead.

The child you are putting this burden on--and it  _ will _ be a child--is going to be young, untried, and you are going to break their heart. Your proxy is going to be an innocent, not a thief-prince whose throne was mysteriously claimed, not a dangerous, precise foe whose lion is sharp-clawed and rangy.

(You think that Natsu will be a cub for them, easily frightened and the fiercer for it.)

You hope that someday they will forgive you for this.

You hope they cling to what they’re owed, and hate you for the rest of their life. 

You know what you’re doing, after all. You’re making this choice, to offer a child their darkest possible future, and you hate yourself for it. You managed to keep the children under your banner close, shielded them until they were old enough to decide for themselves, and you’re going to take that choice away from so many children--not just the younger version of you, but the Guardians they’ve gathered, and more besides.

You are about to break every oath you ever made to yourself. 

It makes you as faithless as your father, everything you never wanted to be. Still, you don’t try to console yourself with the thought that this is the only way. If you can’t keep your promises, at least you will be honest with yourself . If you had been bolder, gentler, more peaceable, less a child of your adopted country, maybe you could have stopped this before it began, or at least before it got this out of hand.

You didn’t. You couldn’t. You were too much the second-best swordsman. Precise, trained, carefully honed and  _ predictable _ .

Now all that’s left is asking a child, untrained and unpredictable with it, to fight your enemy, to save your life after you lay it down.

Now, all that’s left is writing apology letters, and burning them as soon as you finish. All you can do is dream of cradling a child named guilt, who wears your face. 

Mukuro laughs at you for it, settles himself in raven’s form on the corpse’s brow. He still doesn’t forgive you for how long he has been imprisoned, but, at the very least, he doesn’t try to kill you anymore. You’ve talked a lot, over the years, and if he doesn’t trust you and you don’t trust him, at least you have a common cause these days. He never asks about why these dreams have come on, so suddenly, and you never speak of it.

You want to ask him about hell, because if keeping your crown hasn’t already damned you, certainly this does. You don’t, because it’s more personal than you want to get with the murderer you’ve named a Guardian, and you can’t risk anyone knowing what you’re about to do.

The reactions need to be authentic, you tell yourself, and you try not to think about how about this is going to rip the beating hearts out of your Guardians’ chests. You’re going to break your people for the love of your kingdom.

If you were a better person (a lesser swordsman) you wouldn’t dare do this.

You haven’t been a good person since the day you first decided that the blood spilled in the war of inheritance was not going to be yours. At this point, you almost feel like it’s too late to start trying.

And then, Shouichi tells you he’s found who you’re looking for, has found the perfect, necessary version of you.

He’s  _ fourteen _ , a child with his mother still alive, and his Guardians are children too.

You breathe in, deep and bracing, and you know you can’t say no to this, to breaking this child like a matchstick. You have a Family too, and the day you bowed and accepted the blood and the sin that you carried, you gave up any chance to not be a monster. There’s a limited window here, and you either take this chance, gamble double-or-nothing on a boy who doesn’t know what’s going to happen, or you fail the people you swore your oaths to.

(You are faithless, but you are not your father.)

You tell him to put the plans into motion.

You lift your chin, and start counting down the days until you’re out of the game for good, dispersing your Guardians across the world so at least none of them have to see this happen. If you’re going to break them on the altar of saving the world, at the very least you can save them from seeing you fall.

Once they’re gone, you square your shoulders, breathe a little easier, and start planning for a meeting with the Millefiore. Every one of your advisors tells you it’s a trap. You don’t tell them that’s the point.

There’s a bullet waiting, with your name on it. You owe it to this child to meet it without regrets.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me over on [tumblr](http://www.nathanielwsninski.tumblr.com)


End file.
